1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to techniques for processing coin-collection boxes, and, more particularly, to systems and methods designed to automate functions involved in collecting, sorting and counting coins accumulated in coin-collection boxes.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Prior art systems for collecting revenue from coin-operated machines usually involve elaborate processes that are highly labor intensive. For instance, collecting revenues from pay telephones generally entails a complicated process that employs numerous workers who must perform repetitive, manual tasks over long periods. Specifically, the process of collecting coins from pay telephones usually involves removing and gathering the coin boxes from the telephones, transporting the boxes to coin-collection facilities, and then distributing these boxes to operators who manually deposit the boxed coins into automatic coin-counting machines. Prior art efforts at automating various portions of this process have failed to produce a significant reduction in either the number of personnel needed to perform these coin-collection functions or the physical burdens associated with manually handling coin boxes.
More specifically, most telephone coin-collection processes begin with box collectors who manually remove coin boxes from pay telephones and replace them with new, empty coin boxes. Each collected coin box normally contains a security seal to deter tampering. The box collectors truck the sealed coin boxes either directly to a main collection center or to consolidation centers where the collected boxes are mounted on transporters for later transfer to the main collection center. Individual workers, e.g., unloaders, at the main collection centers must then hand feed the coin boxes onto conveyor systems which distribute the boxes to counting stations where other individuals here manually remove the security seals from the boxes before passing the resulting unsealed boxes to operators. Next, the operators record a box identification number on each unsealed box by, for example, scanning a bar-code label on that box. The box-processing operation requires each operator to, in seriatim, open a box lid, dump the contents of the box into a sorter/counter, reset the lid of the box, close the lid, insert a new security seal, position the box in a seal-setting device, and finally place the box on a conveyor to return it to inventory for later use by collectors during the box-collection process.
Those concerned with the development of such coin-collection processes have long recognized the need for improved techniques that simplify the manual operations involved and, therefore, substantially reduce the amount of manual labor or physical burdens needed to perform the various coin-collection functions. Although past efforts at automation have been helpful, such efforts were primarily directed to automating only relatively simple tasks with the result that the need for manual labor was not appreciably effected. For example, prior art automation systems for processing coin boxes basically entailed moving the boxes throughout the system, i.e., automatically routing the coin boxes to an operator for manual processing in a manner similar to the manual process described above. Unfortunately such coin-collecting systems have not proved entirely satisfactory in that these systems still required a considerable number of personnel to handle the coin boxes and also do not alleviate the many labor-intensive, physically burdensome and tedious manual operations heretofore associated with handling filled coin boxes. Consequently, there has been a long recognized need for improved techniques for processing coin-collection boxes.